The field of research software engineering has grown steadily since the term “Research Software Engineer” (RSE) was coined in 2012. Many research-intensive universities now have central teams of RSEs who, like the Research Software Group (RSG) in Advanced Research Computing (ARC) here in Birmingham, are available to support researchers across the university with their bespoke software needs. That might mean helping to run simulations on Baskerville’s GPUs, advising on good software practice ahead of a public release, or contributing directly to new or existing source code.
As the RSE team in ARC has grown, as elsewhere, there’s become a need for an extra layer of line management, lest the RSG group leader be responsible for now almost 20 RSEs! I recently joined the handful of RSE “and Managers”, who devote about a third of their time to line managing other RSEs and helping co-ordinate which RSEs work on which research projects, and when. It’s also meant a small shift towards more oversight of others’ project work.
support(ing) researchers across the university with their bespoke software needs
My “and Manager” role is still characterised by what I’ve found a major feature of my RSE work – variety! This naturally includes variety across subject areas, with my last 15 months involving various amounts of work – from a few days to many months – with groups from biosciences, chemical engineering, english literature, finance, and others. There’s also the technical variety. I’ve had to brush up on programming languages I haven’t used for a while, use unfamiliar features of some I’ve used every day for years, and learn a few completely novel technologies. I still have one substantial technical project to work on, which itself involves a mix of work over time, but the variety has been amplified by my now playing a smaller role on a larger number of projects.
The variety of work is bolstered by the variety of backgrounds in the Research Software Group. Though many of us (myself included) hail from physical sciences, the team includes two doctors of theology and another of music composition! As an “RSE and Manager”, I now have to explicitly consider everyone else’s backgrounds and skills through line managing a few RSEs and helping to co-ordinate the overall work schedule of the RSE team.
Personally, I find it exciting to not just be an RSE but to also be in a position to help to lead and shape our RSE team as it grows. It’s especially interesting to do so when many RSEs across the UK (and global) community are working out how to grow effectively without losing sight of our core aim to develop better software that enables better research.